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London fund managers – even those who specialise in corporate governance and socially-responsible investing – have given a mixed reaction to plans from the European Commission to toughen up company law, including a proposal to make voting disclosure compulsory for fund managers.

Yesterday afternoon, the Commission set out an "action plan" for various legislation and other initiatives through 2015, aimed at encouraging "more engaged shareholders and sustainable companies".

Among its ideas is a proposal for rolling out shareholder votes on executive remuneration across the European Union. This is already law in the UK and several other European countries.

The Commission also says it will consider a change to its Shareholder Rights Directive in 2013 to make it mandatory for fund managers to publicly disclose how they vote for their shares.

Though managers disclose votes to their clients as a matter of course, they are not obliged to tell the general public how they voted at company AGMs. In the UK, it is recommended they disclose this under the Stewardship Code, and many have begun to do so in recent years - but it is not compulsory.

Governance for Owners, a €1bn activist fund manager that specialises in pressing companies on their governance with a view to driving increases in their share price, said it had concerns about this move.

Simon Wong, a partner at the firm, said: "It depends on what the level of detail is. I can see the rationale for proposing this from a public-policy standpoint, but voting and engagement are interlinked. We would always want to have a discussion with management before deciding to vote 'no' on something. We would not want to get into a position where we are having to publicly talk about private discussions with management."

The European Commission is also proposing measures to make it more easy for companies to identify who their shareholders are. Many company shares are owned through so-called "nominee" accounts, which appear on company shareholder registers in the name of custodian banks, as opposed to the fund managers or end-investors actually taking voting decisions.

The Commission said its consultations indicated wide support for greater transparency from both business and investors, but had also thrown up significant technical difficulties. The authority said it would come forward with a plan on how to proceed in 2013.

Aviva Investors, one of the biggest institutional investors in the UK and a high-profile supporter of strong governance and socially-responsible investing, said it supported the Commission's ideas, but they did not go far enough.

Steve Waygood, head of socially-responsible investing, said: "European policy-makers need to go further and include additional transparency requirements. We believe companies that conduct business in a sustainable and responsible manner are more likely to succeed over time and best reward investors. The problem is that the disclosure of corporate performance in this area is generally very poor, so we can’t embed it into our valuation work."

Waygood suggested "proportionate and balanced" legislation obliging companies worth more than €2bn to disclose this kind of information.

Vanessa Knapp, a corporate governance expert at Freshfields, the law firm, summed up the EU proposals as echoing current best-practice in the UK.

She said: "The EU 's proposals appear to have been influenced by the UK approach in areas like comply or explain and director remuneration. UK companies will draw comfort from this and could assume that the end result will not be a million miles away from current practice."